Word is the teacher’s union has joined the Nurses Union in endorsing Herbie the Love Bug for Governor. Teaching and nursing are two professions where you have to show up and stick to it. Perseverance and dutifulness are required. Being a “flash in the pan” doesn’t get your students to the finish line. One might have disagreed with union support for Lincoln Chafee, but given his resume, captain of the wrestling team at Brown, student of humility and honest labor as a farrier, a position with GD /EB in Quonset, and of course, City Councilman and three term mayor of Warwick, and U. S. Senator, who voted against the Iraq war, one could hardly say union support for Lincoln Chafee was not warranted by an impressive resume and a record of being a reasonable public servant.

But in the qualified opinion of the union bosses of two professions of people who actually have to “stick to it” in their careers, the best man to be governor is Herbert “Clay” Pell a man who was made the nation’s first language Czar and quit after just six months. Then he claimed to have overseen the budget. Hmmm. I wonder if he planned, drafted, or submitted a budget for consideration and approval. I wonder if he “audited” performance. I wonder if he conducted a budget review. I’m thinking that anyone who had a flight in or out of Washington D.C. from May to October in 2013 “oversaw “that budget. Nice work Politifact.

So, I worry for the working rank and file teachers and nurses that their representation actually represents them at all. Maybe representing the working ranks isn’t that important to Union bosses. Its more of a herding thing? The approval process for the prospective pension reform settlement is also raising eyebrows. People flipped out when they heard that a non-vote would be counted as a yes. But I myself was stylishly and sophisticated nonplussed.Private associations, corporations, their processes of government do not look exactly like our political elections. That one share of Disney stock Grandma bought you never gave you much control of Disney did it? Other people got to vote MILLIONS of times! So unfair! But getting beyond knee jerk partisan reaction to unions’ chosen approval processes, its not only that a non-returned vote gets counted as a yes, but the ballot roles of these close “solidarity” associations are no better than your town halls. They are sending ballots to dead people! The dead say “Aye!” Union backed Democrats can always count on the dead I suppose. The dead are good that way.

Rand Paul is upsetting some conservatives suggesting that the GOP is like Domino’s pizza crust. It had no flavor, so they had to change the crust. Republicans, he is suggesting are not selling a product that is wanted, that will be purchased, that will be bought, and that is a “winner.” Speaking to students at Berkeley, Paul suggested a new tack for a GOP that was taken aback by Obama in 2008 and 2012, and may face a tough Presidential campaign in 2016 with a pretty strong team of Democratic celebrity, the Clintons and the Obamas at least helping the Democratic candidate against, quite possibly, Rand Paul. He sees individual rights as a direction that can help the GOP gain the leadership position again. But in recent years that hasn’t been the Republican way. Republicans like fighting for taxpayers. This can be fertile ground, but, it’s a little impersonal. There’s a group within the party that has made the party committed to reversing Roe v. Wade, even though on several occasions the Supreme Court has simply not overturned it. It’s not going away. While Blue is polarizing toward abortion rights, red is polarizing to prosecution. While the red team claims this is fighting for a civil right, the actual voters aren’t likely to swing en mass for “prosecution please.” As a fight for rights, it’s a wash and politically probably a losing political Dien Bien Phu. You get the fight you hoped for but it turns out to be a defeat. As for fighting for individual rights, we recently had, starting in 2009, a question of where Rhode Island politicians stood on marriage equality.

But while my lawyer’s nature had me supporting marriage equality in 2009, the rest of the party, not so. The Rhode Island Republican Assemblies was against marriage equality. Supporting marriage equality meant you were not a “true Republican.” Rhode Island Republican Assemblies believes they are the “Republican wing” of the Republican Party. That’s pithy and cute unless you are actually running to represent a constituency of people who would like you to worry more about their concerns more than RIRA’s feelings about your personal life or philosophical opposition to what our founders referred to as “society.” But, could it be that the idea Rand Paul has, of fighting for civil liberties, sort of putting faces on people who may have concerns equal with or more salient than their tax concerns is catching on? Have we heard from RIRA, the shot heard ‘round the Apponaug Circulator?

Warwick, Rhode Island, March 2014. Know all ye men by these presents that at great risk to their life, liberty and happiness, a band of Patriots fight now that that Tyrant, the City of Warwick, which outrageously seeks to prevent its full-time salaried employees from undertaking to run for political office during his full time employment. Arise! For that champion of individual liberties Ray McKay must be allowed to keep his city job and run for United States Senate! Strike! Lay down your implements and muster. Municipalities must NOT be allowed management rights! A city job is a BETTER job with BETTER than average pay and BETTER than average security. Some of the Union guys got to run for office while employed by the city! Let our battle cry go out! “They get to do it so I should get to do it too!”

Zounds! It appears that another Republican has discovered the idea of equal protection of law. Pity, though, in his case it really is literally about only one individual. And, there is this tedious idea of thinking about the big picture as opposed to this vexatious city ordinance. It seems like the idea of limiting political activity of civil servants is not only well-established but wise, no matter how clumsy or inconsistent the Warwick ordinance or Warwick’s practices with respects to different classifications of employees is, keeping government workers out of politics while employed and drawing pay is a good idea.

The Hatch act has long protected us from the politicization of the civil service in the Federal government. Here in Rhode Island, we suffer because we allow union public employees to populate our government to the potential and actual detriment of the taxpayer, we in the Republican party are lead, this week, not to pass a Rhode Island Hatch Act, but instead to a silly belligerent fight for an unlikely that defeats the managerial rights our cities so desperately need. We are Republicans. We’ll consider privatizing anything. The private sector is the way, only government ever disappoints wastes or fails..blahblahblah idolatry of business chants ensue…. Almost any private sector employer would say to my Network manager; “If you are going to run for U. S. Senate, I wish you good luck, but I cannot promise you your job will be here when you come back, maybe you could request a leave of absence. And, we can’t have the city network at risk due to your political profile while employed here, if nothing else.”

Ray McKay’s personal frustration is understandable. He’s a citizen, a nine year military service veteran, a free man and a taxpayer and he cares enough to be involved. But we all run up against obstacles and have to make sacrifices, choose one thing over another. Take the red pill. See how deep the “don’t have a public sector paycheck goes.” Your brothers await you. RIRA, the “Republican wing of the Republican Party” one would assume, champions the “rugged individualism” that celebrates private sector risk taking. So many of us in the private sector want to run too, but our private employers have the management rights that make them successful and profitable, and that means sometimes they say “no.” And those of us who are self-employed, we know that campaigning for office means time away from our practice or our shop or our sales calls. And those who have actually run for a significant office know that there are many things to be done and no matter how much help you have, the press is going to want you to answer questions and show up to tape segments, and call in for a quick interview and all that stuff, and that’s the fun stuff, is going to happen during the normal work day. And the more help you have, the more you are managing, so the “ I have help thing.. ?” Not..going.. to fly.

So, maybe the RIGOP needs to change its crust, like Rand Paul suggested, but that’s an adult conversation. The appetite is clearly for something that feels more like a persecution complex. If Ray McKay really wants to make a serious run for Senate than he should be what he believes in. Quit the safe government job. Live on your stored resources. Believe that in this country you can make it even if you don’t have a government job, even if it is Rhode Island. Go find out who you are without your job to show up to and your direct deposited government salary. Either that, or wait, or help someone who isn’t bound to their job like a serf to the manor. Help someone. That’s actually a good message for the Republican Party. Help someone.